Tornado does the ton!

In the early hours of Wednesday morning under the cover of darkness new build A1 class locomotive conducted a test with a loaded train over the East Coast mainline between Newcastle and Doncaster where a top speed of 100 mph was sustained for 48 seconds and then dropped to the higher 90's after for some miles to prove that a heritage steam loco was capable of operating at a proposed new limit of 90mph in service on charter trains running on the East and West Coast mainlines among the high speed diesel and electric services.

The current speed limit is 75mph,this run to 100mph was to show that it could run comfortably at 90mph and have a bit in hand.

Last year a Gresley A4 conducted a succesfull early morning test running on the Great Western Mainline to prove it could run at a sustained 90mph for a one off special.

Now apparently up to a confirmed (independently) 101.6mph, according to a British source.

The "100mph" running is apparently the same thing some posters have noted for American practice, 10% over the desired running speed. (Plus that little smidge, of course ... like doing the brake testing in '38...)

75mph speed limit (again according to British sources) is actually more a factor of the headlights (they can't be 'portable' oil lamps, as so many of the preserved locomotives use) although there may be further tests required once a permanent, high-intensity wired system (as on Tornado) has been provided.

One interesting comment (in light of the development path the UP Heritage team has taken in recent years) is the idea of using full source documentation (and presumably NDT where older material is preserved) for all the metallurgical and technological systems that have an effect on high-speed reliability. Interestingly, full roller bearings are not a mandatory item for 100mph running -- as, perhaps, they should not be.

Any reason it would be burning more coal per hour than it would when working hard at normal speed?

My understanding -- perhaps very wrong -- is that the skill and dedication level necessary to single-man-fire a locomotive of this size may be no longer 'typical' of the men available to fire Tornado now.

Mr. Bray was an expert with great and long experience at the time of the record run.

I've been in the cab of the Tornado and looked it over pretty good. The high-intensity headlights are clusters of LEDs, each one about the size of a large grape. The cab is full of computer equipment. Cab? I meant, "on the footplate." Sorry, chaps!

There are a couple of answers to this. The first is that very few locomotives that would fit the British loading gage have enough 'firing requirement' for any mechanical stoker, let alone one that requires worm elevators and some kind of jet arrangement for distribution. Inherently any stoker is 'wasteful' of coal compared to good shovel placement by a skilled (and motivated) fireman; this is why Leonor Loree had one of the most thermodynamically-advanced locomotives built in America, the four-cylinder triple-expansion 4-8-0 named after him, equipped with the Red Edge 'stoker'.

Porta liked the type of stoker that had 'flingers' for the elevated coal rather than steam jets -- Elvin, and later some of the Detroit Stoker marine designs, were made like this. With some care these can be made with 'pinball'-like haptics that give fairly good control of how much coal goes at what angle with what force to place it "where needed" in a dynamic and changing "grate environment". But this is overkill, and still not quite as flexible as a good shovel.

Meanwhile, for some American locomotives the size of much British power, the actual amount of shoveling might not have actually been that much, a great deal of the time. In one of the books on PRR early power, it was noted that some extremely long distances between 'shovelings' were recorded on some classes of 4-4-0s and 4-4-2s -- more than 40 miles on the road, in a couple of cases. Perhaps needless to say, if even a modicum of intermittent shoveling were added, many more routes and miles might be added. In places where crews received either bonuses or penalties based on fuel consumption -- some roads in France, for example -- you can almost bet that skill with the shovel would be preferred to normal "American" stoking arrangements...

L F Loree stuck with handbombers on D&H because he was too cheap to install mechanical stokers, Red Edge shovels cost a lot less. D&H's compound 2-8-0's and 4-8-0 may have been the most efficient steam locomotives ever built, when they ran. Their mechanical complexity was their downfall.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it.
Paul

I believe it was more their relative slowness for the degree of mechanical complexity that was their downfall; there was, increasingly, no place for a hyperefficient cutting-edge boiler plant on a drag-freight chassis when things like 4-8-4s and Challengers could get the freight moved much faster.

It might have been interesting to see whether Loree could have developed a higher-speed locomotive using some of the technology in the 1400s, particularly multiple expansion on common crankpins -- perhaps an American version of the sort of thing Chapelon was doing in the '40s with 160 A1. In the event, however, stoker-fired big steam won out over Red Edge anything, and then of course diesels won out over big steam anything.

Steam will come back, with just water vapour as the exhaust..pure and white and virtually instantly dissipate. It's the future. Not science fiction.

Were it not that TATP is a state explosive, we might have been relatively far along toward that future even now. (One catalytic cycle generated, as I recall now, 11 molecules of steam at about 850 degrees per molecule of CO2, while keeping the catalyst peak spot temperature low enough to give good working life).

We use both Hydrogen Peroxide and Acetone in the Uranium milling process up here to produce Yellowcake...

Presumably not acetone as TTFA, God help you (which makes cyanides look a bit simple), and you use the acetone earlier (separating ammonium uranyl carbonate) then convert to uranium peroxide? Presumably this is a leachate feedstock?

...in our Gold Mines it's cyanide, the real stuff, under lock and key and 3 people know where and how)

That stuff's not all that scary, although to be respected always -- I used it for watch cleaning 'back in the day' as there are few things that remove corrosion from steel parts as well. Very careful to avoid anything that would put much CN radical into a gas phase... hmmm, might that have been a useful term for Hunter in his earlier career? was probably used - does NDG know?

Do not think a Steam Locomotive with markings proudly stating "Powered by Mother Of Satan" is in the cards.

Nor do I ... the TATP problem is only induced by potential diversion of even a comparatively small percent of the kilotonnage of 30-50% H202 involved in practical railroading with a cat cycle. Or widespread deployment of 'natural' or 'biological' methods of generating H202 feedstock or using solar energy for concentration, to make the quantity required. There is little use for TATP itself in vehicle propulsion, and it is not particularly useful even as an inducer for pulse detonation engines, so no, we won't be proudly stating that any time soon -- thank heaven!

Most if not all of the 'redirected solar beam' alternatives work much better in the 'classic' scenario for steam-powered railroads: use photovoltaics, or make steam to use in some optimized ground-based Rankine-cycle powerplant, and then use one of the methods of "zero-emission" or hybrid electric railroad propulsion we have been discussing in some threads here. Or finally, after all these wasted years, put up some powersats with appropriate rectenna siting and start actually making the bell ring for electricity fairies...

The two general 'exceptions' to this involve something like the approach proposed for the California Solar Steam Train, where the solar heat is either used to produce supercritical water for a 'fireless cooker' or to heat up thermal-storage elements inside a fireless-cooker reservoir that produce longer effective steam-generation time 'on the road'. Harry Valentine worked out some elaborate versions of this. I personally think that some of the nuclear cycles provide much better process energy for that approach than solar does.

The Uranium process from raw ore to yellowcake is a step by step process using pressure & temperature in Pachucha tanks, thickening, close pH monitoring and chemical additives, mostly as flocculants. We produce a pregnant aqueous, then flock making a barren strip. Not wanted minerals and metals are removed this way. Special chemicals are used to trick and strip out Moly, which likes to come along for the ride.

Tanker trucks, with a large pup trailer, come through town everyday hauling Hydrogen Peroxide to 3 different mills. Key Lake Mill is the largest uranium mill in the world in terms of production...it's huge. McLean Lake Mill is the only U mill in the world that can process non slurry ore...that is to say the actual rock. It has the proper heavy shielding to do so in the recieving bins, crushers then ball and rod mills. Rabbit Lake mill is the third. Rabbit and Key receive uranium ore already as a slurry in special tanks hauled by truck. 2 tanks to a truck.

Also coming through town daily are trucks with Lime, Molten Sulpher ( we make our own H2SO4 on site as transport hazardous), Acetone, and various flocculants, plus a lot of hardware and foodstuffs for the Mines, Mills and on site living 2 or 3 weeks at a time. Personnel fly in.

Yellowcake goes out in 55gal barrel drums for further refining and ultimately U rods for reactors worldwide...to those "on the list" that is.

Uranium is legally a strategic metal and the Mine ownership's, buying and selling are strictly controlled in terms of "as to who" but in a free market system of pricing. France has the highest level of minority ownership allowed at 49% of the Cigar Lake Mine and McLean Lake Mill.

Cameco is the main operator and owner, being formed out of the old El Dorado days, with joint Canadian and US ownership.

All of this trucking on gravel, unpaved roads, ice roads in the winter, that stretch hundreds of miles North to the Athabasca Basin.

If, if, if...CNR had simply put in a junction/switch in Prince Albert as they crossed the North Saskatchewan River and then built North, as they did exactly that in neighbouring Manitoba and Alberta ( Churchill and Hay River lines), then all this could go by rail, but it was not to be.

Exploration has backed off somewhat from it's usual frenzied pace with capital scarce and U prices low, however it is still quite active.

A new Mine will be producing soon at Patterson Lake, discovered by a couple of guys in their 30's, who are now Saskatchewan's newest billionaires. Rio Tinto has a dandy in the Roughrider deposit but that one is all hush hush.

"Very careful to avoid anything that would put much CN radical into a gas phase... hmmm, might that have been a useful term for Hunter in his earlier career? was probably used - does NDG know?"- RME

Good one RME!

I'm sure you can appreciate that unfettered access and use of cyanide by 400 Mill employees X2 shifts, 94% of whom have no science background or exact appreciation of what it is , outside of the fact that it will kill a person, requires some pretty stringent rules on usage and access.

We lost a professor at the Mining School who had the extreme and unfortunate bad habit of using a beaker from the ChemLab for drinking water during his lectures.

You know what's next. During a demonstration using cyanide he drank from the wrong beaker. It is odourless, colourless and tasteless, just as water. He died on the spot in front of horrified students. The antidote was there but by the time they found someone who knew what to do it was too late. Hard to believe but true.

On a personal note Easter Break is now at an end. On Monday I am leaving for a 3 day Public Relations gig with the Saskatchewan Mining Association and following that will be going with the senior class to Key Lake Mill for 5 days of 'job shadowing", a requirenment this Semester

Point being I may be absent from the forum for a bit. Not that anyone gives a hoot, just information in case I do not answer on an inquiry or comment on something neat.

You know what's next. During a demonstration using cyanide he drank from the wrong beaker. It is odourless, colourless and tasteless, just as water. He died on the spot in front of horrified students. The antidote was there but by the time they found someone who knew what to do it was too late. Hard to believe but true.

I don't believe there is an effective antidote to much primary ingested-cyanide poisoning - it shuts down mitochondrial respiration quickly, but more to the point denatures important proteins in the brain irreversibly (I'd assume TTFA does much the same). I thought the antidotes were more for things like cyanogen inhalation or heavy HCN exposure.

Lethal dose (not just "LD50") of some cyanides is remarkably small, even in peripheral mucous-membrane contact. I don't remember the precise cyanide which, I was told, had one drop in the eye invariably lethal; might be a number of them.

RME-Yes that is all correct. We had at that time a cyanide antidote kit in the Chemlab. I think it contains amyl nitrate and sodium nitrate. It is supposed to interrupt the "electron chain" but in this case of accidental drinking a sizeable amount it is doubtful he could have been saved, or if it would have been effective at all. Perhaps if taken immediately after, within seconds. A very careless and tragic accident.

Note that the mechanism of action of the Lilly kit is largely to induce methemoglobinemia in the blood to induce the cyanide to bind preferentially to it. I'd think that hyperbaric or forced-ventilation oxygen would assist in this situation.

Other therapies, including rhodanese and extracts of "pure" methemoglobin free of cellular material. might be used for severe cases. There's supposed to be enough rhodanese available in typical liver tissue to convert over 500g (!) of cyanide, which is a considerable number of moles, so even relatively high ingested amounts might be accommodated with reasonable additional IV concentration of the enzyme.

Nothing, except there are likely to be some over there who will consider it when 3463 takes back the speed record. And others who will need to resuscitate them for 5550 in the second act...

It's a classic example of thread drift -- from Tornado doing the 'ton', to the reasons for it, to the desirability of bringing back big steam, to a wish to bring back steam with none of its usual 'drawebacks', to a discussion of ways to do that which had some ... problems, to a discussion of keeping dangerous chemicals separate, to a discussion of uranium separation, to a joke about EHH, to fun with cyanide. It ought to be possible to make one of those newspaper-feature word-combination problems out of this, say to get from TORNADO to CYANIDE with eight two-word phrases...